Page 126 of The Mating Game
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say unconvincingly.
I peek over at Jeannie to catch her rolling her eyes. “Oh, come off it. The pair of you were trapped here for days, and I come back and the entire place smells like heat. I’m not stupid, you know.”
“Yeah, well,” I chuckle darkly. “Maybe I am.”
“It’s not stupid to admit you care about the girl,” Jeannie points out. “And it’s been clear to me for weeks that you do, even before all this heat business.”
“I have no issues admitting I care about her,” I say with a sigh.
The problem is, I think I care about hertoomuch.
“Then why are you sitting here moping? You could have told her how you felt.”
“How do you know I didn’t?”
“Because I know you, and you don’t let yourself have good things easily. Too busy carrying guilt from an actual decade ago that isn’t yours to carry.”
“That’s not—”
“Don’t tell me it isn’t true,” she cuts in. “You’ve holed yourself up here on this mountain ever since your parents died, because you still feel responsible for what happened to them, and you think sequestering yourself in this place is somehow your penance.” She cocks her head and gives me a pointed stare when I look back at her with an open mouth. “Am I wrong?”
“I don’t know,” I say too quickly. “I…You’re not…notwrong.”
“Baby boy,” she sighs. “You’re smart, and you’ve got a good head on your shoulders…but sometimes you can be a real dummy.”
I rear back. “What?”
“Your parents loved you to pieces. They would hate the thought of you sitting around here blaming yourself for something that was a complete accident. They’dhateit if they knew you were still punishing yourself, and deep down, I think you know that.” She shakes her head. “Maybe this is a conversation I should have had with you years ago, and I’m sorry I didn’t, but something tells me you might be more open to hearing it now.”
“Really? What makes you say that?”
“Because I’ve been watching you with that girl for weeks now, and you look at her just like I used to look at your uncle. Like she hung the moon.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say dejectedly. “There’s nothing for her here.”
“You’rehere, aren’t you? I’d say you’re plenty worth hanging around for.”
“That isn’t—”
“And for that matter,” she says, cutting me off, “who says you have to stay married to this place? You’ve been holed up here so long, you forgot there’s a whole world out there to explore.”
“Are you saying I should give the place up?”
“I’m not saying that at all,” she tells me. “But I’m saying you don’t have to pour every waking moment into it. This place will always be here. We always find a way to keep it going. You don’t have to give it yourentirelife to make sure that we do.” She pats my shoulder. “You can let yourself have a life outside it, you know?”
I run my fingers through my hair. “We don’t even know if Tess wants anything more from me, Jeannie.”
“You’re right,” she says, startling me a bit. “We don’t know that, because if I had to guess, you let the girl run off without telling her how you feel out of some silly, misguided sense of being all noble and deciding what’s best for her without giving her an actual say, am I right?”
I open my mouth to answer, closing it just as fast when I realize that she is, in fact, one hundred percent correct.
“That’s what I thought,” she says smugly. “So now you have a decision to make.”
My brow wrinkles. “I do?”
“That’s right,” she answers. “You can either keep going as you have been, giving your entire life to this place without taking anything for yourself out of guilt for something that wasn’t your fault at all, or…”
“Or?”
